Irish walk off with pride, bruises

March 02, 2006

SOUTH BEND It began with the usual bouquets and hugs for departing seniors Megan Duffy and Courtney LaVere, but they dispensed with the artificial sweetener soon enough. Senior Night, hold the sugar, with extras on elbows. Notre Dame needed to win its last game at the Joyce Center to avoid the indignity of playing another one here in the NIT. It would take more than a few packets of Equal for this team to swallow that. So urgency bordering on desperation during Tuesday's game drowned out the emotional farewell that preceded it. "More than anything else," LaVere said, "we knew we just really needed to win this game." Jason Kelly Commentary It looked like the jayvee game before one of the olden-day encounters. Two proud teams trying to "out-don't" each other. Imagine how the kids must feel, watching the local television feed and wondering why all those tall guys keep falling down. Indiana's Sean Kline was whistled for a foul for backing into Purdue's Gary Ware. But Kline didn't appear to gain an advantage. He just looked like he was settling into a lumpy beanbag. As Bryant Dillon nursed the clock in the first half, biding his time to manufacture one last Boilermaker shot, he scooped the ball instead of dribbling it. That's a carry, a rare old violation that seldom interrupts the rhythm of the modern game. Not once, but twice -- Indiana had one too -- that endangered call brought a premature end to a possession. Hoosiers-Boilermakers, circa 2006: Making the carrying violation relevant again. Indiana won 70-59, by the way, streaking away in the final minutes, making up for all the missed shots along the way that made it interesting on the scoreboard. On the court, interesting would be the wrong word to describe it. Just because the game stayed close until Marshall Strickland and Robert Vaden lit Indiana's offensive torch didn't make it dramatic. With the score tied at 30 in the second half, Purdue's Matt Kiefer launched a 3-point attempt that glanced off the rim. His coach Matt Painter doubled over on the sidelines, like his dinner didn't agree with him. Almost before 14,038 fans at Mackey Arena finished groaning along with him and turned their heads to the other end, Indiana threw a pass and the potential momentum swing away. It continued in that vein -- missed shot, mistake, repeat -- for so long that the problems seemed to be contagious, inflicting both teams on both ends of the court. "We weren't hitting our shots," Indiana guard Roderick Wilmont said, "but we were playing bad also on defense." Purdue didn't take advantage on offense, following its 42 percent first half with 37 percent in the second. Painter diagnosed the Boilermakers' affliction this way: So much erratic shooting went to their heads. "They're not trying to miss shots," Painter said. "They're trying to make shots out there. Sometimes when you miss an easy one, it leads to the next shot because you're thinking too much." In the second half, the Hoosiers proved that they didn't shoot 29 percent in the first on purpose either. Strickland, Vaden and a couple easy baskets from Earl Calloway allowed Indiana to inch away as slowly as possible for a team suddenly making a nuclear 71 percent of its shots. That heat melted whatever defense the Boilermakers could muster, the simplest explanation for the Hoosiers leaving West Lafayette with its NCAA Tournament ambitions intact. "Making shots," Indiana coach Mike Davis said. "When you make shots, you cure a lot of things." Cure, disguise, whatever. Either way, the Hoosiers won. It will go down in the record books just like all the rest that came before it, even if the uniforms were the only connection to the rivalry's royal history.